Trust Oriented Secure Ad hoc Networks: A Generic Framework

Due to nonexistence of or little of pre-existing communication infrastructure, ad hoc network permits wireless mobile nodes to self-organize into random and momentary network topologies. Security is a critical concern in ad hoc networks owing to its intrinsic vulnerabilities. A number of security solutions are suggested in the literature but still more is needed. Augmentation of trust to the existing security infrastructures would enhance, on the whole, security of these environments, but most of the studies in literature include trust modeling in the protocol. By this means trust is a foreign component i.e. not a part of the structure itself. Thus its effectiveness is restraint to that protocol. So a framework is desirable with trust as an integral component. The paper presents a desirable framework. At present, Trust modelling is mostly hard-coded into an application, which augments its complexity as well the incapacity to adapt to changes. This can also restrict the usage of those trust models for other protocols and for different network activities. The present study introduces an independent trust model for ad hoc networks. It provides the separation between application and trust model. A functional scenario depicting the usage of said model in ad hoc network environment is also presented.